Kings of A&R

The British record industry is calling on the Government to extend its research and development tax-credit scheme to music companies, to try to help it keep the UK at the forefront of the global music scene.

The BPI - record industry’s trade body - argues that the music sector spends a bigger proportion of its profit on R&D than the aerospace, motoring and defense sectors put together. Yet it does not qualify for any of the financial support from the Government like other sectors.

Peter Jamieson the chairman of BPI said the music industry spends 200 million+ a year on developing new talent such as Corinne Bailey Rae, one of the biggest new British acts. He said that such levels of investment were on a par with the pharmaceutical sector.

“We believe the time is right for government, together with industry, to consider closely a tax-credit regime for A&R [artist and repertoire], which is the music business’s research and development,” he said. He also said that the music industry’s £200m a year spend on R&D makes an enormous contribution to the British economy. He said music industry sales generated £300m of VAT revenues alone for the Government last year

It’s worthy a try.

YouTube has finally named its price according to a US newspaper report that claims the video sharing website is holding out for $US1.5bn ($1.99bn) offer from would-be suitors.

Yesterday’s report in the New York Post said the figure had come from a senior industry source and it named potential buyers as Viacom, Disney, AOL, eBay, and News Corp, parent company of The Post.

Youtube is seeking out new ways to generate revenues on the back of its success through advertising and content deals and is also facing a battle to legitimise its activities amid industry accusations that much of its video content violates copyright protection.

Other labels, including Capitol Records, have also been dabbling with the idea of releasing commercial videos on YouTube and NBC is using YouTube to promote some of its television content after the two forged a partnership in June.

• Time Warner Chief says YouTube and FaceBook Over Valued. It’s a Big Leap of Faith

Media companies looking to acquire internet sensations Facebook or YouTube would need to take a “big leap of faith” to pull the trigger on a deal at the valuations of close to $1bn being discussed, said Dick Parsons, chairman and chief executive officer of Time Warner. He said the two most attractive assets available to increase web traffic were Facebook and YouTube. “[But] it’s a tough assignment. Valuations that are put on those businesses that currently make no money are astronomical and you have to have a big leap of faith,” he said.

• About 83% of iPod owners throughout Europe do not regularly buy digital music
  Only one in five European iPod owners regularly buys songs online, new research shows, a signal that the music industry will need to rely more heavily on other ways to recover revenue lost to piracy and illegal downloading.
• Wallflowers leader Jakob Dylan has signed with his father’s label, Columbia Records, after his band ended its relationship with Interscope Records.
• Clive Davis and Courtney Love have teamed up to help revive her floundering career.

INXS, which found a new singer via the CBS reality show “Rockstar,” is no longer with Epic Records North America.

Drew Alexander who KOAR talked about in the buzz section signed with Geffen.

Check out unsigned Virginia act Race The Sun. After playing a few local shows the band recorded their first EP, Contents of a Dead Man’s Pocket, in late 2002.  Two years later, after countless self-booked tours, the band had begun to refine their sound as well as build a substantial buzz for themselves up and down the East Coast.  The band inked a deal with Fidelity Records (home to Madison, Escape Engine) in February of 2004 and released their highly anticipated full-length, The Rest Of Our Lives Is Tonight, produced by Jesse Cannon (Lifetime, Senses Fail, Northstar, and Madison) later that year.  Member changes struck and the band sought out to reinvent themselves in 2006.  The team consist of manager Eron Bucciarelli (drummer for Hawthorne Heights), lawyer Dan Friedman and booking agent Mike Mori (The Agency Group). The band recently recorded two songs with producer David Bendeth (Hawthorne Heights, Breaking Benjamin) as well as two additional songs with Jess Cannon.  Check out the track Puss Masters of the Universe

Yahoo! is a threat to Apple and Microsoft and is looking to end Apple’s and Microsoft’s dominance of the technology behind online music.

Yahoo! will sell Jesse McCartney’s new album “Right Where You Want Me,”(Hollywood Records), in the unprotected MP3 format.

That means consumers will be able to play it on any digital music device, including Apple’s iPod. MP3 files are the only type that will play on an iPod besides those downloaded from iTunes.

Since MP3 files have no no copy protection, they can be easily traded on peer-to-peer networks, emailed to friends or burned onto an endless number of CDs.

“We’re trying to be realistic,” said Ken Bunt, senior VP of marketing at Hollywood Records. “Jesse’s single is already online and we haven’t put it out. Piracy happens regardless of what we do. So we’re going to see how Jesse’s album goes (as an MP3) and then decide on others going forward.”

Labels and Netcos will be watching sales of the album, which Yahoo! will promote heavily to see whether consumers are more interested in buying unprotected MP3 files and whether it has any impact on piracy.

Yahoo! only has rights from Hollywood to sell the album in its entirety, for $9.99, not by individual track. ITunes and other musicstores also will sell “Right Where You Want Me” with copy protection.

“We think this is a really good experiment, because copy protection is not doing anything to stop people from stealing when you can just get unprotected tracks off of a CD or get music illegally online,” said Yahoo! Music topper Dave Goldberg. “We think it’s good to make it easy for consumers to get digital music on whatever device they want and for companies like us to not be reliant on one particular technology company for how our consumers can access music.”

For furter reading check out KOARs article “Why not Sell MP3’s?”

Futuresex/ Love Sounds
Justin Timberlake
TW 684,461
**Timberlake earns first No. 1 solo album in U.S.
Also No. 1 in Britain, Ireland, Australia and Canada, and top-five in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, France, Denmark, and Hong Kong

Continuum
John Mayer
TW 299,644

Extreme Behavior
Hinder
TW 63,598
Total 672,701

Revelations
Audioslave
TW 49,102
Total 191,553

Face the Promise
Bob Seger
TW 150,833

Paramour Sessions
Papa Roach
TW 36,742

Decemberunderground
AFI
TW 11,903
Total 641,323

Oh No
Ok Go
TW 11,411
Total 69,127

Paris
Paris Hilton
TW 9,882
Total 130,220
**I still don’t understand Paris Hiltons involvement with the record business. She is a brand and is paid substantial dollars for personal appearances. As far as record sales, this does not help her brand, not that it will weaken it.  It’s more or less the moral factor: embarrassing. Stick to what your good at it.

Falling Away
Crossfade
TW 9,493
Total 52,459
**Remember Crossfade? The band that wrote the big single “Cold” that landed them on top 40 radio which resulted in a platinum record. Not this time. This is called a sophomore slump. “Hits” cure cancer.

Moby’s new greatest hits album, Go – The Very Best of Moby will be released on October 24th. This is the first-ever, and definitive Greatest Hits collection chronicling his entire career to the present and features the exclusive, brand new single “New York, New York” with NYC icon and Blondie frontwoman Debbie Harry.The collection includes a 2006 Mix of the track that started it all, “GO,” a live version recorded in London of “Feeling So Real,”
as well as hits from his years with Instinct, Elektra and V2 Records.
The limited edition version is packaged with an 11-track remix CD personally compiled by Moby and includes the legendary “Bodyrock” Olav Basoski’s Da Hot Funk Da Freak Funk Remix.

• Feeling so Real - Live in London (mp3)